Yesterday, 19th May 2025, the Faculty of Agriculture was honored to host an important delegation of change-makers from the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU).
The University of Nairobi Postharvest Research Team led by Prof. Jane Ambuko had an opportunity to showcase some of the ongoing initiatives aimed at reducing Food loss and Food waste in Horticultural value chains.
At the Fresh Produce Aggregation and Distribution Hub built through an academia-industry partners between the University of Nairobi and Mabati Rolling Mills Ltd - Member of the SAFAL Group, the team demonstrated the vision of linking smallholder farmers in rural areas to markets (urban and export market outlets). This is aimed at ensuring better profits for the farmers while making the nutritious commodities such as the African Indigenous Vegetables conveniently accessible to urban consumers.
At the Food processing Hub built with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Dr Duke Gekonge, a star graduate of Food Science and Nutrition demonstrated how he has applied the knowledge from his training to develop high quality products from fruits and vegetables. He has developed a wide range of high value products (juices, chips, jams, wines etc.) from fruits such as mango, guava, banana, tamarind and others that would otherwise go to waste.
FOLU is on a mission to find and scale evidence-based solutions that benefit people, nature and climate. Researchers from the Faculty of Agriculture are ready to collaborate with the FOLU coalition partners to contribute towards this vision by generating evidence to inform policy and science-based solutions to food systems challenges.
The Postharvest research team is already engaged with some of the FOLU partners including the World Resources Institute - Kenya to address food loss and food waste data gaps through measurement; implement some of the recommended interventions for food loss/waste reduction; and then evaluate the economic, social and environmental impact of such interventions.
We look forward to forging more collaboration with FOLU partners in the efforts to address land use and food systems challenges towards sustainability – for the people, nature and the planet.
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